


It's Such A Feeling

by stoprobbers



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1784200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh now I'll tell you something I think you'll understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Such A Feeling

_Oh now I’ll tell you something_   
_I think you’ll understand_   
_When I say that something_   
_I wanna hold your hand_

They’re walking away from Harriet Jones and he imagines he can smell the metallic tang of exploded alien rock and metal and burning flesh, can hear a thousand screams, and he thinks what he just did to the Prime Minister is too much and not enough at the same time. He can feel every molecule of the air bouncing off any and all uncovered skin and for a moment he is back on Satellite Five and Rose is glowing and golden and dying and  _I can see every atom of your existence and I divide them…_

He glances at her and sees she’s turning back.  _Tsk_ , he thinks, unbidden.  _They never listen_. He knows, once the die has been cast you never look back. He’s seen and learned a thousand times. Shortly after the Time War, after he woke up angry and dead inside, he found himself in Sodom, begging Lot and his wife to go, to forget their house and their things and all those stupid trappings that keep you at a distance from your loved ones, and don’t turn around, you can’t turn around (though he couldn’t say  _why_ , you can’t just explain that on some planets what humans call table salt is actually a very small but very powerful ruling class who like Earth’s oceans and want to breed with its salt and it’s really not anyone’s fault that they do but he’s got to  _stop them_  so  _get moving_ ), but that stupid woman turned around all the same, sad to lose a rug her mother gave her or something else that  _insignificant_  and then he almost didn’t get to the Dramberian Bishops in time to prevent them from taking over all of Mesopotamia because he’d had to comfort the man instead and physically prevent him from going back for his wife and turning into salt, too. Humans are just a bunch of sentimentalists, he thinks angrily to himself, thinking again of the woman standing helplessly behind him (he can feel her eyes on the back of his head), who was once his ally and now his… Well, he doesn’t quite know what she is now. Not his ally, though. No second chances, he said. That’s the sort of man he is.

Harriet’s eyes on the back of his head is making his scalp itch and Rose is staring at his profile which is making his cheeks itch, but it’s his hands, his palms that itch the most. He wonders if this is a side effect of rapidly re-growing a lost limb, but then why would the left palm burn so? He shoves them into the pockets of his borrowed dressing gown and turns to his companion, to a girl he… cares for beyond any precedent and who hugged her boyfriend ( _ex-boyfriend_  his mind supplies, but he’s not sure if he believes that anymore again) instead of him when  _he_  was the one who saved the planet with an excellent speech and even excellent-er swordplay. No, the hug was left to her  _mother_. He makes a face at the thought and turns to Rose in hopes of getting the itch out of his sideburns.

“What?”

“You’re so different,” she says. A spike of hurt flares in his heart.

“Good different, or bad different?” he tries again. She rolls her eyes.

“So are you well now? Are you leaving?” They’re almost back to the stairs to the Tyler flat and Jackie and Mickey are too close for this conversation so he slows down and lets them pass, lets them think they’re opening the door and not giving him and Rose space to talk but Rose knows, he knows she knows because she slows down too and avoids the bump of Mickey’s hip against hers with a sly twist. He wonders if she realizes that he’s got his eyes glued on her hips now.

“I, er,” he stalls for a moment, letting Jackie and Mickey pass, letting Rose hold up a key produced out of her hoodie pocket to show she can get inside, rubbing his palms against the terrycloth inside the pockets because  _they itch_ , Rassilon, why do they itch so much?! With the rest of their small group gone Rose turns back to him and crosses her arms.

“Doctor,” she says.

“No, I’m not quite well yet,” he admits, rubbing one itching palm against the back of his neck, against the short (but not as short as they used to be) hairs there. It helps, but only for a second. “Best to stick around a few days, let myself heal up properly. Not to mention giving the TARDIS a chance to recover, poor girl I flew her into a building! I wonder how long she’ll hold that against me, she’s a bit finicky about stuff like that as you’d do. But no, best to be careful just this once. This regeneration–“

“Is that what you call it?”

“Yes,” he says, slightly taken aback by the sharpness in her voice, “That’s what we call it. Called it. What I call it.”

An awkward silence falls and she looks uncomfortable and he wonders if that’s because she’s remembered he still survived the War, even if this is his second body since the end of it. Since he ended it. The awkward silence hurts and he fills it up instead.

“Anyway. This time it was… harder, than usual. A bit more intense you could say. Not an average death.”

“Because you absorbed the Time Vortex.”

That’s his girl, always paying attention even when she’s scared to death. He can’t hide his grin even if it doesn’t seem to shake the discomfort from her eyes.

“Yes. Exactly. All of time and space inside my old body and my old body was bigger on the inside, you see, just like all bodies even yours, but it was still too big, still too much for a Time Lord to handle. It was going to kill me no matter what but Time Lords, we — I — can cheat death. We can change.”

“Yeah. You said.”

“And here I am.”

There’s a pause. She looks like she’s deciding between questions.  He waits, but it hurts. His skin prickles and his brain stem screams at him to run. He wonders if she knows that, can appreciate what it’s taking for him to stay.

“Why did you absorb the Time Vortex? And how?”

Yes, that’s his girl. Paying  _too much_  attention. He wonders how he’ll get out of this one.

“Oh, it’s all very complicated stuff. Under threat, under pressure, the TARDIS will open herself up and give me what I need to survive it. It’s what she did after the War, to keep me alive. You saw her do it for Margaret Slitheen. It’s not particularly common, not particularly uncommon but she’ll do it because she cares and because I’m the only pilot left for her–“

“She did it for me,” Rose says suddenly, a small light flaring to life in her eyes. It looks golden and smells of time and it scares him. “When you sent me back, I got a car, then a truck — Mum got us the truck, actually — and we tied a chain to the console and pulled and pulled and she opened. For me. I looked. That’s the last thing that I remember… that I looked. And then you were there and bursting into flame.”

She looks sad and scared and completely unsure and he hates it. He reaches out to take her hand, to comfort her, and she backs away slightly. He shoves his tingling, aching hand into a pocket again and rocks back on his heels, trying not to show his hurt.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, she opened for you. Yes, she helped you. And yes, she helped me.”

“How did she help me?”

“She let you look into her. She gave you the power to save me.”

“But you said the inside of the TARDIS, the heart of the TARDIS, was time itself. The vortex.”

“Yes.”

“Doctor,” she says, taking a step closer and he tries not to let the thrill show, “How did you absorb the vortex from her?”

“I didn’t absorb it from her,” he says slowly, carefully, knowing this will be all or nothing, “I absorbed it from you.”

She looks stunned and he worries he’s ruined it but then her lips move, trying to make a word, once, twice, succeeding on the third try.

“How?” 

Oh, he wants to show her. He remembers the feel of her, the taste of her, how unbelievably soft and unbelievably warm her lips were and how they felt a little like death but mostly like life, wonderful, glorious life, the first time he really felt  _alive_  in every cell of his body, in every tiny forgotten pocket of his impossibly old soul. He has thought of kissing her again at least fifty times since he opened the doors of his beautiful time ship and asked her, all cheek and hidden fear and “Did you miss me?” and dreamed about it twice as often in the hours before. He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that this body will crave Rose’s kiss until it burns and changes once more. But he can’t, not now, not when her eyes don’t shine with trust and affection, not now when she won’t even let him hold her  _hand_. So he gives her a tiny grin and shakes his head and waits to see what will happen.

She’s quiet, his Rose. He can see the wheels turning in her head, can see her working out what may have happened, what  _must_  have happened. Sees a flare of anger, of fear, and a tidal wave of sadness. Takes a step back. He waits for a reply but it doesn’t come. Instead she reaches into her pocket for the key to the Estate. She fits it in the lock, opens the door, and takes a step inside, still holding the door open behind her with a hand, when she realizes he isn’t following. She turns back and this time it’s the fear, not the sadness, that’s shining through. He gives her a small grin.

“Might pop back to the TARDIS, have a proper shower, change out of these pyjamas…” he trails off, looking down, sheepish. “I imagine Howard will want them back sometime.”

“But you’re not leaving?”

“Not unless you want me to.”

“I don’t,” she says and it’s breathless and he finds the tingling in his palms increases tenfold at the sound. “Come up for dinner? It’s Christmas dinner and I know you don’t trust Mum to cook but she’s good with a turkey, I promise? Please?”

“I suppose I’ve already skipped out on one of her dinners,” he says, pretending to mull it over, already knowing he’d do anything she asked, anything he  _could_  do that she asked. Even if it killed him, again. “And she has taken care of me for a few days… I suppose I can make an exception for _these_  domestics.”

The relief on her face feels like a thousand benedictions and he gives himself a quiet, internal moment — stretched, through his time sense, into what feels like years — to bask in it. It heals almost as much as the shower will.

“Here,” she holds out her key, “So you can let yourself in. Don’t think Mum’ll fancy the TARDIS parked in the living room on top of the tree.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He takes it, wondering if she can feel the significance of this, of giving him a key in return for the one around her neck (he can see the chain), and their fingers brush. Abruptly the tingling in his right hand stops, soothed. It returns halfway to the TARDIS. He wonders what it means as he steps beneath the scalding hot spray and lays his hand on the coral wall of the bathroom, letting it go for now.

*     *      *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *    *

That night they stand outside under snow that’s not snow, looking at stars that aren’t stars, and he wants to imagine he can smell the acrid smell of wreckage but all he can smell is the lingering marijuana smoke on his new coat (Janis Joplin gave him that coat!) and the flowery scent of Rose’s shampoo. He wants to bury his nose in her hair and breathe it in proper, so he can smell it mixed with Rose, with that human smell he can’t ever replicate or find anywhere else, but the closest in contact they’ve come is sharing that Christmas cracker. He doesn’t want to push her away; he doesn’t want her to stay behind.

“Are those meteors?” she asks. He shakes his head.

“It’s the spaceship, breaking up in the atmosphere. This isn’t snow, it’s ash.”

She gives him a look like he just stole Christmas. “Okay, not so beautiful.” He grins back at her.

“And what about you?” she asks softly, taking a step closer, and he loses his breath for a moment wondering if she just called him beautiful, “What are you going to do next?”

Oh. “Well… back to the TARDIS. Same old life.”

“What, on your own?”

“Why, don’t you want to come?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Do you though?”

“Yeah.”

His hearts are pounding and she still looks so shy and he doesn’t know if he is willing to believe this just yet, in case it’s not true. “I just thought… cuz I changed…”

“Yeah, I thought cuz you changed you might not want me anymore.”

“Oh, I’d love you to come!” He barely knows what he’s saying, can feel the silly grin taking over his face but can’t stop it, can feel his hand leave his pocket of its own volition, seeking her, wanting her, needing her. 

“Okay!” She sounds so happy and he is so, so relieved. Jackie and Mickey are talking, she’s replying, but he can’t hear her anymore because his skin, his palm, it’s on  _fire_  and her hand is so close. She looks down, noticing his sticking out, and he wiggles his fingers, an invitation. 

She slips her hand into his. His skin first roars with flame then soothes itself like she is a magic balm, an ointment, a salve on his soul. He feels happy, content, and so, so very in… well, best to just leave that thought there, for when she’s used to the new him. For when they can truly move forward and not just in a slow diagonal, feeling each other out, picking up where they left off piece by piece. He thinks, briefly, that he’s being a maudlin git then dismisses it so he can grin at her, use that hand to pull her closer, and turn towards the sky. They plot their next move.

_Oh please say to me_   
_You’ll let me be your man_   
_And please say to me_   
_You’ll let me hold your hand!_


End file.
